Adjunct Faculty Association members, on strike, picket outside the Administrative Building at Nassau Community College in Garden City on Sept. 12, 2013. (Credit: Newsday / Alejandra Villa)

The adjunct faculty union at Nassau Community College is suspending its strike immediately and will return to the negotiating table with college officials early next week, the union president said Friday.

Both sides have scheduled a meeting for Wednesday at 8:15 p.m. at an off-campus location that is to be announced.

All members are expected to go to their classes and teach until further...

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The adjunct faculty union at Nassau Community College is suspending its strike immediately and will return to the negotiating table with college officials early next week, the union president said Friday.

Both sides have scheduled a meeting for Wednesday at 8:15 p.m. at an off-campus location that is to be announced.

All members are expected to go to their classes and teach until further notice, Adjunct Faculty Association president Charles Loiacono said.

The back-to-work advisory, posted on the union's website, came less than 24 hours after NCC's acting president, Kenneth Saunders, told the adjuncts that they could lose their jobs if they did not return to work on Monday.

Under the state's Taylor Law, which forbids strikes by public employees, adjuncts are fined two days' pay for every day they do not work.

It was unclear how many classes were canceled Friday because of the strike. College officials, who had advised students to continue to come to classes, said they still were actively taking attendance. Classes after 5 p.m. were not held in observance of Yom Kippur.

NCC, with 24,000 students, is the largest single-campus community college in the state. The adjunct faculty union represents about 3,000 part-time, nontenured professors and instructors.

Union members began picketing Monday afternoon after the college's board of trustees did not approve a contract proposal that the union said would have raised their pay by 4.9 percent annually. The union has been working without a contract since 2010. It is the first time the union has gone on strike since 1982.

On Friday, Saunders said representatives of the college's board of trustees and the administration will be prepared "to engage in serious negotiations toward reaching an agreement" at Wednesday's meeting.

Loiacono, in announcing the strike's suspension, said the college "now seems serious about negotiations."

"Unfortunately, it took a strike and the involvement of the county executive to be serious and come to the negotiating table," he said.

Loiacono has said he brokered the earlier proposed pact with County Executive Edward Mangano's office, asserting that NCC trustees were not bargaining in good faith.

Several NCC trustees told Newsday that the proposed contract was negotiated by Mangano's office. The outside labor counsel for Mangano's office, however, has said that the county "did not make any deal" but "simply encouraged the communications of both sides to avoid a strike that would greatly affect countless faculty and Nassau students."